"Sneer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... laugh that had a little sneer in it, "put them to the test! I will not object to that, if you will only keep your notions to yourself. Now, Christian, give me your word for silence, and we will freeze here ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... sink again. March tried to forget him in the wonder of seeing the Germans begin to eat and drink, as soon as they came on boards either from the baskets they had brought with them, or from the boat's provision. But he prevailed, with his smile that was like a sneer, through all the events of the voyage; and took March's mind off the scenery with a sudden wrench when he came unexpectedly into view after a momentary disappearance. At the table d'hote, which was served when the landscape began to be less interesting, the guests were expected to hand their ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... who came to see her now and then. He had obtained an open exhibition at Oxford, and one day I found that he had a Greek Euripides in his pocket, and that he needed little help from a dictionary. He sometimes brought with him a college friend, and well do I remember a sneer from this gentleman about the poor creatures whose acquaintance with AEschylus was derived from Potter. I did not look at a ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... could picture Burke as with an incredulous sneer he hung up, and told the committee to clear out and go ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... talking of him as if he were the hero of a novel. Why, that's nothing to what the adjutant discovered about him. He discovered that he had a 'lover's lips'—whatever that may be. If the adjutant meant a nice mouth, why, it was nice enough, but of course it was intended for a sneer. That adjutant of ours was not a very delicate fellow. 'Look at those lover's lips,' he would exclaim in a loud tone while Tomassov ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... readers at home with this statement before them proceed too hastily to laugh or sneer at China for unprogressiveness. For my part, as I have thought of this matter of money transfer over here, the whole question has seemed to me to be on all-fours with our question of land title transfers at home, and the more I have thought of ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... inexorable. This time I should not escape, nor my accomplice either. Out with it, and at once. With a show of regretful resignation I gave in. For once I would break my rule and "tell on" my informant. I thought I detected a slight sneer on the Doctor's lip as he said that was well; for he was a gentleman, every inch of him, and I know he hated me for telling. The ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... to it!" Darsie declared in self-vindication. "I can't stand it when boys are superior. Why must they sneer and jeer because a girl wants to go in for the same training as themselves, especially when she has to make her own living afterwards? In our two cases it's more important for me than for you, for you will be a rich landowner, and I shall be a poor school marm. You ought to be kind and ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... good you are!" I cried, without noticing her sneer; "tell me all about it, dear; tell me every word ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... corresponding to them, two natures had command of him. He saw Helen like dawn and Miriam like night, and as one irritated him with her calm, the other roused him with her fire, and he came to watch for Helen that he might sneer inwardly at her, with almost as much eagerness as he watched for Miriam that he might mutter foul language, like ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... observing shoemaker," commented the other with a slight sneer. "You mean the—the half ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... surprise. But you really mustn't be seen here," said Pledge, with a sneer. "The holy ones will think I am luring you back ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... I will not keep you longer from your fishing or your rowing—which is it to-day, Cardo?" and he raised his black eyebrows, and spoke with a slight sneer. ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... imports. The saloons were doing well enough, apparently, from the number that streamed in through their airlock entrances. But Gordon saw one of the bartenders paying money to a thickset person with an arrogant sneer; he knew then that the few profits from the cheap beer were never going home with the man. Storekeepers in the cheap little shops had the same lines on their faces as they saw on ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... the time, makes it rather less difficult for us to try to reconcile unflinching honesty with a just and becoming regard for the feelings of those who have claims upon our forbearance, than would have been the case a hundred years ago. 'It is not now with a polite sneer,' as a high ecclesiastical authority lately admitted, 'still less with a rude buffet or coarse words, that Christianity is assailed.' Before churchmen congratulate themselves too warmly on this improvement in the nature of the attack, perhaps they ought to ask themselves how ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... gross. It is good Comedy enough to observe a Superior talking half Sentences, and playing an humble Admirer's Countenance from one thing to another, with such Perplexity that he knows not what to sneer in Approbation of. But this kind of Complaisance is peculiarly the Manner of Courts; in all other Places you must constantly go farther in Compliance with the Persons you have to do with, than a mere Conformity of Looks and Gestures. If you are in a Country Life, and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... youth, but not austere in age; Calm, but not cold, and cheerful though a sage; Too true to flatter and too kind to sneer, And only just when seemingly severe; So gently blending courtesy and art That wisdom's ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a sneer, for of all pitiable objects he regarded an unmanly man as the most despicable. He consented, however, to sit down on a grassy bank and watch the proceedings of this Indian dandy, who had just seated himself in front of his wigwam for the purpose of ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... much did you slip that reporter to pull off that dope about you?" inquired Willard with a sneer. ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... sensed something of a drama, of which he thought his comrade was unconscious. There was a hint of a sneer in Mordaunt's voice and Jake thought his remark was meant for the girl. Her eyes were fixed on Jim, and she looked disturbed. It was plain that Mordaunt noted this. Mrs. Halliday was rather ostentatiously careless, Bernard quietly looked on, but Jim gave ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... in panels would hardly qualify her to answer you," Mrs. Burrage said, with a polite covert sneer. ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... Bernibus' turn to sneer, and he did, raising the skin above his teeth and scowling fiercely at the King. "What is it that we have worked for all of our lives? Do you still not understand? You and Wagner plot to return the world to ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... said, a flash in her eyes. "It was an Austrian court. The Count—my husband, I should say—is an Austrian subject. His interests must be protected." She said this with a sneer on her pretty lips. "You see, my father, knowing him now for what he really is, has refused to pay over to him something like a million dollars, still due for the marriage settlement. The Count contends that it is a just and legal debt and the court supports him to ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... happen right sometimes, you see," pursued Cousin Elizabeth, triumphing in this refutation of some little sneer of mine which she had contested the day before. "I knew you had come to care for her, and now she cares for you. I never was indifferent to that side of it. I always hoped. And now it really is ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... advantage. To me this is a very great disappointment. I have always had a very high opinion of the intellectual values of the leading divines of both the Anglican and Catholic communions. The self-styled Intelligentsia of Great Britain is all too prone to sneer at their equipment; but I do not see how any impartial person can deny that Father Bernard Vaughn is in mental energy, vigour of expression, richness of thought and variety of information fully the equal of such an influential lay publicist ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... fish there?" asked Jacobi from Henrik, with an impatient sneer, "and what matters it to him whether your sister Louise likes ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... have seen in books, I have seen written on battlefields, with steel and blood. They sneer at my mean origin. Where,—and may the gods bear witness,—where, but in the spirit of man, is nobility lodged? Tell these despicable railers that their haughty lineage cannot make them noble, nor will my humble birth make me base. I profess no indifference to noble ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... that labourers received a ducat a-day for their toil, half of the honest fellows declared themselves ready to emigrate. "Et, il vino, signore; quale e il prezzo del vino?" demanded the padrone. I told him wine was a luxury with us, and beyond the reach of the labourer, the general sneer that followed immediately satisfied me that no emigrants would go ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... be the Christian's creed to return good for evil," answered Girty, with a strong emphasis on the word Christian, accompanied with a sneer; "but by ——! such belongs not to me, nor to those I mate with! Hark you, Ella Barnwell! I could be induced to do much for you—for I possess for you a passion stronger than I have ever before felt for any human ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... me in the same way you pay your board bills," said Ebenezer, who may be excused for the sneer. "I can invest my money to better ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... jamb with one hand again it. "I expect y'u can say those lovey-dov good-byes without my help. I'm going into the yard. If y'u want to y'u can plug me in the back through the window," he suggested, with a sneer. ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... his banished the sneer. "Be fair, Nick," she urged. "We are not all made with wills of iron. I know you are bitter because you think he isn't good enough for her. But would you think any man good enough? Don't think I wanted this. I was on your side. But I—I ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Being turned his eyes full upon the student, who blushed a little under the half-sneer of ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... a bow. His expression had changed from the sneer it had worn as he stood in the shadow covertly watching Archdale's face. "Friends, is it not?" he added, and he smiled and held out his hand tentatively. His host hesitated in the least, then took it. He had been obliged to remind himself first that instinct was not an ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... a little sneer. "Some love affair; some girl or another who pursues him, that he wants ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... lady's affections are more advantageously disposed of?" he asked, with a sneer. "Thank you, I am sure. And, since you have given me a lead, just hear a word of good advice in your turn. Is it fair, is it delicate, is it like a gentleman, to compromise the young lady by attentions which (as you know very well) can come ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hi! Cab! Hi!" Oh, no! On the sullen brute will go; When he wants a fare, he's clamorous and unruly; But if he wants a drink, With a sneer or with a wink, He'll rumble on and just ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... a little laugh, unpleasant to the ear—the laugh of a man who has been right down to the bottom of life and comes up again with a sneer. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... but they can not follow the scent. Ha, ha, ha! They may advertise from now till doomsday, but they will never get a response from him! Let them rake the Susquehanna if they can! Perhaps, deep in its mud, they may find what the fishes have left of him!" she said, with a sneer. ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... with a shrug, she went into the nursery. The nurse had been so glad to get back that most of her old hostility toward Ethel had vanished. Still there were signs now and then of a sneer which said, "You'll soon be paying no more attention to this poor bairn than her mother did before you." And it was as well to show the woman how blind and ignorant she was—to make her ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... The house is full of critics. They will write of what we do, not of what we are going to do." He began to pace up and down, trembling with disappointment and fury. He turned suddenly. "How about the second act? Did you make those changes in Sidney's lines? I infer not," he added, with a sneer. ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... attempt to conceal the sneer with which the young man glanced at the brown loaf gracing the platter on the Hegumen's knees. Seeing then a look of pain on the paternal countenance, he continued: "No, I have had breakfast, and came to see how you are, and to apprise you that the city is being stirred from the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... fancy! I understand that remark; you mean it as a sneer. It was a passing fancy with Gussie, I will admit. But, Dexie, it is a strong man's love that now burns in my heart. Think of all that it is in my power to give you, if you will only receive it. But the fact that I possess a fortune gives me no pleasure unless I can share it with ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... aid society, of which he was president; showing himself at the races, at the theatre, or even at Baroness Dinati's; longing to break the dull monotony of his now ruined life; and, with a sort of bravado, looking society and opinion full in the face, as if to surprise a smile or a sneer at his expense, ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... 3rd Lord SALISBURY born on St. Blaise's festival. Consequently might be expected to set the Thames on fire. This said with a sneer, should go splendidly at a second-rate Radical luncheon-party. On the 14th, if you receive an uncomplimentary missive, say it is less suggestive of Valentine than Orson. This capital jest should make you ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., January 3, 1891. • Various
... devil in his sneer That woke emotions of both hate and fear; And where his scowl of fierceness darkly fell, Hope, withering, fled and ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... Rockwood, I doubt if you see him before mid-afternoon." The sneer is plainly evident here, and Grandon feels some antagonistic ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... now, though accustomed to buying far closer, Whenever in markets or stores I appear To lay in provisions, the butcher or grocer Will glance at my dollar and quietly sneer. ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... paid no attention to the sneer, flung his shoe at him. The soldier was reading by the light of the flames, when the missile came, striking the ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... speculation as that he had fled from. Coleridge and he had both been public lecturers; Coleridge mingling, with his politics, Theology, from which the other elocutionist abstained, unless it was for the sake of a sneer. This quondam community of public employment induced Thelwall to visit Coleridge at Nether Stowey, where he fell in my way. He really was a man of extraordinary talent, an affectionate husband, and a good father. Though brought up in the city, on a tailor's ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... answered the elder sister, with a sneer; "it is no place for a cinder-sifter: stay at home and ...
— The National Nursery Book - With 120 illustrations • Unknown
... all very well for you to sneer, and talk about art. But there are already in this world a deal more Standard Works than any man can hope to digest in the average lifetime. I don't quarrel with them, for, personally, I find even Ruskin, like the python in the circus, entirely endurable so long as there ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... charity of Tommy and Nick, which she had never suspected, Audrey was very annoyed by it. She detested it and resented it. And especially the charity of Miss Thompkins. She considered that from a woman with eyes and innuendoes like Tommy's charity amounted to a sneer. ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... could make John Bull blush, I should think it might be that; but he is a hardened and villainous hypocrite. I always felt that he cared nothing for or against slavery, except as it gave him a vantage- ground on which to parade his own virtue and sneer ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... trembling and listening to a heavy footfall which was approaching up the stairs. Suddenly father Bijard brutally opened the door. As usual he was far gone, and his eyes shone with the furious madness imparted by the vitriol he had swallowed. When he perceived Lalie in bed, he tapped on his thighs with a sneer, and took the whip from ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... had at last become Tired of long waiting, and of sitting dumb Upon his charger; so with greenest leer He vented his impatience in a sneer. "Is this," he said, "the glorious Table Round, And is its glory naught but empty sound? Braggarts! I put your bluster to the test, And find you quail before a merry jest!" Then the great king himself stood up in ire, With clenched hand raised, and eyes that gleamed ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... say, and his thankfulness on the point was proof to him of how years and circumstances had estranged him from Evelyn; for, though he would not obstruct or forbid, it would be impossible for him to keep a sneer out of his face when she told him she had been to the sacraments or refrained from meat on Friday. "What a strange notion it is to think that a priest can help one," he said, thinking then that his presence would be a sneer, however he might control his tongue or his face; she would feel ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... shovel were mere "silver men," on whom "Tom" looked down from his high perch on his steam-shovel as far less worthy of notice than the rock he was clawing out of the hillside. How many a silent chuckle and how many a covert sneer must the Maleros on the Zone indulge in at the pompous airs of some ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... e'er death first may reap Here in a Father's arms shall quiet sleep, The tender flowers shall grow above his head And drink the dews that fall upon his bed. The silent grave is safe from foolish sneer And ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... gave her time, notwithstanding Angelika's restlessness, which could hardly be controlled. She even began to sneer; but there was something holy in his anticipation: ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... included my intelligence in the sneer at Scotland Yard. He argued the point with me until he forced me to admit that there was a large element of luck ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... would certainly not be led towards the main body of the enemy. Concentration of purpose, singleness of aim, was more than ever necessary, now that time pressed and a decision had been reached; but the sneer of the French officer reproduces the idle chatter of the day in London streets and drawing-rooms. These, in turn, but echoed and swelled the murmurs of insubordination and envy in the navy itself, at the departure from ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... Alexey Alexandrovitch. The smartly dressed and healthy-looking nurse, frightened at the idea of losing her place, muttered something to herself, and covering her bosom, smiled contemptuously at the idea of doubts being cast on her abundance of milk. In that smile, too, Alexey Alexandrovitch saw a sneer at his position. ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... are colorless as water; they savor not of Milton, Socrates, or Menu; seem not drawn from any private cistern, but rain-drops out of the pure sky. Whim and conceit are tare and tret. It matters little whether a man whine with Coleridge, or boast with Ben Jonson, or sneer with Byron, or grumble with Carlyle, if every thought is one-sided and warped. The oddity relieves our commonplace, and pricks the dull palate; but we soon tire of exaggeration, and detest the trick. It is egotism, self-sickness, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... opposite, opinions as to what constitutes Love. One opinion is that Love is sexual love, sexual attraction, sexual desire. To people holding this opinion love and sexual desire or "lust" are synonymous. And they laugh and sneer at any attempt to idealize love, to present it as something finer and subtler, let alone nobler, than mere sex attraction. The writer has heard one cynical woman—and more than one man—say: Love? There is no such a thing. Sexual ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... game of chess, I smiled and made some remark about a bad move of one of the players, upon which his opponent, turning to me with a sneer, said "No doubt you think yourself very clever, but wait till I have finished off this stupid fellow, and I will play you for any ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... of my public—of the world in general. He threatened me with the divorce court. Divorce, with its humiliations, its confessions of failure, its publicity, had always appalled me. The sneer 'another actress being divorced' made me a coward. He knew that; he had found it out, somehow; his great talent was in bringing weaknesses to the surface. He detailed the charges he would bring against me; every one of them was a lie, but they were so ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... instead of that for the bilabial voiced spirant. Whether the form fefaked was ever good Latin in Rome may be doubted, for the Romans, in spite of the few miles that separate Praeneste from Rome, were inclined to sneer at the pronunciation and idiom of the praenestines (cf. Plautus, Trin. 609, Truc. 691; ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... never elicited from the prudent Susie more than the safe statement that the handsome stranger was a friend of Aunt Abbie's, whom she had met at Jacksonville. They could not laugh at her: they could not sneer at gay deceivers and lovelorn damsels when she went to the sewing-circle. The bitterness of her tears was greatly sweetened by the consideration that in any case no one could pity her. She took such consolation from this thought that she faced ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... In the exercise of that duty which presses heavily upon every reviewer, to seem, if not to be wiser than his author, many of the English periodicals, even those most favorable to America, undertook to doubt his statements of fact, to sneer at his prophecies of the future as ludicrous exaggerations, and to term them striking and whimsical instances of Yankee braggadocio, and of the love of building castles in the air. Cooper could not well overstate the ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... Jordan, with a sneer. "Well, it wasn't altogether that. There was a good bit of luck in the whole job, too, but Prescott is in Coventry, and there he'll stick, too. He'll be away from here inside of two ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... fanatic sprang into Valentin's eyes; he strode towards the priest with clenched hands. "And, perhaps," he cried, with a blasting sneer, "perhaps he was also thinking of leaving all his money to ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... right—save that he has no money—and is welcomed with tearful affection by his favourite sister Mary, shakes hands silently with his father, and has a long whispered conversation with his mother, which leaves him very subdued. His brothers forbear to sneer at him, partly because it is Christmas, partly on mother's account, and thirdly, because Jim can use his hands. Aunt Emma, who is fond of him, cheers him ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... to the place being unfortified. Captain Podgers had got angry, and declared that the man, an experienced old sailor, who had just come from thence, must know more than a young fellow, as he was, could do. Mrs Podgers, with a sneer, also remarked that perhaps he would rather not have any fighting, lest he might get a cut across his face, and spoil his beauty, or the smell of ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... all the rest of that rot? I am well aware that the Southern trigger-finger is none too steady, where lovely woman is concerned," he admitted, with a faint sneer. "But when one plays for high stakes, Miss Eustis, one runs the risks. Granted I do get shot? That wouldn't give you the letters: it would simply hand them over to prosecuting attorneys and the public press, and they'd be damning with blood upon them. No, I don't think there'll be any fireworks—just ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... Emperor" whom he had outraged in an "Admonition" to the English people which he had lately issued; and the English service was restored. Whittingham and his adherents, still resolute, as Bale wrote, "to erect a Church of the Purity" (we may perhaps trace in the sneer the origin of their later name of Puritans), found a fresh refuge at Basle and Geneva, where the leaders of the party occupied themselves in a metrical translation of the Psalms which left its traces on English psalmody ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... [1] Many sneer at a "God of wrath" and say they believe in a "God of all love." God is love, but He is just as surely a God of wrath; and were He not a God of wrath, He would not be God, but a fiend. He who loves purity and chastity and has no ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... breeding warriors, poets, lawgivers, saints, and fertilizing Europe with her missionary genius. However far those times are, however grim and pitiful the havoc wrought by the race war, it is nevertheless a fact for thinkers and statesmen to ponder over, not a phantasy to sneer at, that Celtic Ireland lives. Anglicization has failed, not because Celts cannot appreciate the noblest manifestations of English genius in art, letters, science, war, colonization, but because to repress their own culture and nationality is at the same time to repress their power of appreciation ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... criticism. Long after his death, Thackeray, who had an intense sense of human character, but was typically stupid in valuing and interpreting it, instinctively sneered at him and exulted in his defeat. That sneer represents the common English attitude towards the Burgoyne type. Every instance in which the critical genius is defeated, and the stupid genius (for both temperaments have their genius) "muddles through all right," is popular in England. But Burgoyne's failure was ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... wisdom. He who striveth, having commenced anything, till it is completed, who never wasteth his time, and who hath his soul under control, is regarded wise. They that are wise, O bull of the Bharata race, always delight in honest deeds, do what tendeth to their happiness and prosperity, and never sneer at what is good. He who exulteth not at honours, and grieveth not at slights, and remaineth cool and unagitated like a lake in the course of Ganga, is reckoned as wise. That man who knoweth the nature of all creatures (viz., that everything is subject to destruction), ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... smote the evil things with the golden rod of Jesus, and they rolled over the cliff in hideous rout, and perished in the Atlantic far below. We know that these tales are but the dreams of children: but shall we sneer at the devotion of those poor Irish? Not if we remember (what is an undoubted fact) that the memory of these same saints has kept up in their minds an ideal of nobleness and purity, devotion and beneficence, which, down-trodden slaves as they have been, they would otherwise ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... after Silence spake A Vessel of a more ungainly Make: "They sneer at me for leaning all awry; What? did the Hand then of the ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... The term "Epic Satire" (p. 6) certainly seems to refer to the wedding of two disparate genres in The Dunciad, lifting it above satire that is merely "rugged" or "mischievously gay" (p. 8). (The epithet is also, perhaps, a thrust at Edward Ward, who had pinned it on The Dunciad with a sneer.)[22] ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... Ayres I had the good luck to visit the independent province of Paraguay, which my readers must have heard spoken of, sometimes with admiration, sometimes with sneers, as the hot-bed of Jesuitism. Those who sneer say that the Jesuit fathers who left Spain under Martin Garcia formed this colony in the River Plate entirely in accordance with the principles their egotism and love of power dictated. It may be so; it is possible that the Jesuits were ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... at that time in Belfield a class of spiteful people, who, doubtless, being inspired by envy at beholding the felicity of the happy pair, affected to laugh and sneer a good deal at what they jeeringly called Jack Bugbee's marrying his grandmother. But, as if it had been specially ordered on purpose to confound these ill-natured jokers, this union, the object of their ridicule, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... magical lantern than a man's head," I replied, a little disconcerted by his sneer. "Chemists say there's more phosphorus in the brain than anywhere else; and so I ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... pauper, the prisoner, the slave. It stands in his mind, that our life in this world is not of quite so easy interpretation as churches and school-books say. He does not wish to take ground against these benevolences, to play the part of devil's attorney, and blazon every doubt and sneer that darkens the sun for him. But he says, ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... what they may be going to try and do"—and Eve endeavored to imitate the sneer with which Reuben had emphasized the word—"but I know that trying with them means doing. There's nobody about here," she added with a borrowed spice of Joan's manner, "would care to put themselves in the way of trying to hinder ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... one of the friends they had known at Gettysburg. This gentleman, in conversation with the medical director, told him he knew two of the ladies there. The reply illustrates the peculiar position in which they were placed. "Ladies!" he answered with a sneer, "We have no ladies here! A hospital is no place for a lady. We have some ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... advised to take first. They stood about the tops of basement stairs, and walked two and two along the dirty pavement, with their little hands tucked into their sleeves across their breasts, aloof in immaculate cleanliness from the filth around them, and scrutinizing the scene with that cynical sneer of faint surprise to which all aspects of our civilization seem to move their superiority. Their numbers gave character to the street, and rendered not them, but what was foreign to them, strange there; so that March had a sense of missionary quality in the old Catholic church, built ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Jamaica born, an' no slabe," repeated Sam, courageously, the first-mate's chuckle having put him on his mettle more than the captain's sneer. "I'se ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... it is," she said quietly, "that if anyone conquers his particular vice, people sneer at him and call him names? You seem to think that curing a cancer in one's mind is rather an effeminate thing to do, Louis—rather a priggish thing. I suppose if you get cured of drinking you'll say you never did it for fear of being called ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... proposal Father Hecker had made to him. The answer was given with a good deal of heat: "I have never done such a thing in my life, and I am not going to begin now!" Nor had he any use for bitter speech even in cold blood. "One thing," he said in a letter, "I will now correct; a sneer—intentionally or consciously— is a thing that, so far as my memory serves, I am as innocent of as a little babe." Yet he could be sarcastic, as the following memorandum shows: "Cardinal Cullen once said to me, after I ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... yourself from the beginning to be ridiculed, to expect that many will sneer at you, and say, He has all at once returned to us as a philosopher; and whence does he get this supercilious look for us? Do you not show a supercilious look; but hold on to the things which seem to you best ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... so careful of his precious person when I took him prisoner, I did not know but your carefulness might extend to his horse," replied Conway, with a sneer. ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... lust and cruelty may change with the amusements they permit, but officialism promotes all with zeal. At present we laugh at Mesmer and study hypnotism; at present we sneer at the incarnations of Vishnu and inquire into Theosophy; at present we condemn the sacrificial "great custom" of King Prempeh and order our killings by twelve men and the sheriff and by elaborate machinery; at present ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... bourgeois wouldn't have seen the spectacle of the Guard against the Guard. In war times, I don't say anything against it. Two heroes of the Guard may quarrel, and fight,—but at least there are no civilians to look on and sneer. No, I say that big villain never served in the Guard. A guardsman would never behave as he does to another guardsman, under the very eyes of the bourgeois; impossible! Ah! it's all wrong; the Guard is disgraced—and here, at Issoudun! where ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... The sneer was lost upon the Carrier, who sat down too, and shaded his face with his hand, for some little ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... where he met courage and strength equal or superior to his own. He possessed about the average of bull-dog courage and more than the average of physical strength, but observing that Joe was gifted with still more of both these qualities, he lowered the handspike, and with a sneer replied— ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... without paying their score generally leave their luggage as security,' answered the host with an insulting sneer, and pointing towards ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... cheek from nose to mouth, too, was deeper and more hard than with Iff; and there was a hint of elevation in the nostrils that lent the face a guise of malice and evil—like the shadow of an impersonal sneer. ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... boyhood, Sylvia!" cried her father, and for the first time his voice became embittered. "I was brought up by a respectable father. Yes, respectable," he said, with a sneer. "Everything about us was respectable. We lived in a respectable house in a respectable neighborhood, and twice every Sunday we went to church and listened to a respectable clergyman. But!—Well, here's a chapter out of the inside. I would ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... He cannot control a sneer. The men who are lumber-hewers, dirt-diggers, cod-fishers and factory operatives will never face the Southern chivalry. He despises the sneaking Yankees. Traders in a small way arouse all the arrogance of ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... banks, are perhaps the severest trials to both horse and rider. The majority of the hunt pulled up at the edge of one of those formidable chasms, and I was by no means unwilling to follow their example; but the look of the strange rider had a sneer along with it, which put me on my mettle, and I dashed after him. The hounds had scrambled through, and we rode nearly abreast through a broken country, that mixture of bog and firm ground which occurs frequently in newly cleared land, and over which nothing but the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... angry have no charity? Shall wealth, not worth and vulgar pomp and show, Be the sum total of all good below? Shall we, then, cease for innate worth to scan? Look to the new made coat and not the man? Those who are raised in such an atmosphere Are they who have the ever-ready sneer At honest poverty, and at the road To competence which their own fathers trod If men of worth will stoop among the vain, We turn from them with sorrow and with pain Man may repent, reform, his steps retrace, But is there renovation for a place? Will a community ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... big surprise to me. I was then corresponding with two Boston papers and one in the West. I thought it discourteous in the artists of the new Impressionist school, to sneer a little at Bierstadt's great paintings, as if he could ever be set back as a bye-gone or a has-been. And it gave me great pleasure to say so. I sent several letters to him, and one day I received a card asking me to call at his studio ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... at Mr. King's portrait of me because he has not painted me as I am! What would you have said if he had painted me as I am? What would you say if Conrad Lagrange should write the truth about us and our kind, for his millions of readers? You sneer at me because I cannot uncover my shoulders in the conventional dress of my class, and so make a virtue of a necessity and deceive the world by a pretense of modesty. Go look in your mirror, you fool! Your right to sneer at me for my poor little pretense is denied ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... that,' said Mrs. Willoughby, with a sneer at the folly of the creature. 'He seems to look upon Mallinson and himself as the two figures which tell the weather in a Swiss clock. When one comes out of his box the other goes in. I catch your trick, you see,' and her ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... and time consume beauty, youth, love, glory, genius. Human life is nothing; death is no better. Worlds are born and die like ourselves. All is nothing. Yes, yes, yes! All is nothing.... To love or hate, enjoy or suffer, admire or sneer, live or die—what does it matter? There is nothing in greatness or littleness, beauty or ugliness. Eternity is ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... brought pistols,' his second said, disregarding the sneer. 'But my principal, though the challenged party, is willing to waive the ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... my estate without a touch of a sneer, when we were alone; but with strangers, he rang the words out ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... assertion I thought you were jesting; but afterwards I called to mind the peculiar spots on the back of the insect, and admitted to myself that your remark had some little foundation in fact. Still, the sneer at my graphic powers irritated me—for I am considered a good artist—and, therefore, when you handed me the scrap of parchment, I was about to crumple it up and throw it ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... sneer at dream study, because they have never looked into the subject, there are those who do not dare to face the facts revealed by dream study. Dreams tell us many an unpleasant biological truth about ourselves and only very free minds can thrive on such a diet. Self-deception is a ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... The sneer returned to Sara's voice. "You ask Jim if he ever heard of locking the barn too late? Tell him to bring ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... County Clare, on the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic. They might say what they liked to him, but he would never be untrue to the girl whom he had left there. His aunt had spoken of the "affair of—the Irish young lady;" and he had quite understood the sneer with which she had mentioned Kate's nationality. Why should not an Irish girl be as good as any English girl? Of one thing he was quite sure,—that there was much more of real life to be found on the cliffs of Moher than in the gloomy chambers ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... choice left us to refuse to see them," answered Marie Antoinette, sighing. "The populace who are howling and crying without are now the master of the men who come to us with a sneer, and ask us whether we will grant them ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... a trace of a harsh sneer outlined on his face. "If they get killed, I am sorry. If they live, they are useful. If they are lost, others take their places. They are merely a part of the general scheme. They are for me ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... told which shows his impudence and incurable perversity. One day he was caught taking some money, and was soundly whipped by his cousins. When this was over, the child, instead of showing any sorrow or asking forgiveness, ran away with a sneer, and seeing they were ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... of something Dutch that was probably supposed to exist in the sound—the Anglo-Saxon race having a singular aptitude to turn up their nose's at everything but their own possessions, and everybody but themselves. I looked at Lucy, with sensitive quickness, to see how she received this sneer on my birth-place; but, with her, it was so much a matter of course to think well of everything connected with the spot, its name as well as its more essential things, that I do not believe she perceived this ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... the lot among us now, which two shall fight to-morrow;— For armour bright we'll club our mite, and horses we can borrow; 'Twere shame that bards of France should sneer, and German Dichters too, If none of British song might dare a deed ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... thee justice here, Tho' distant from thy native shore, For all thy faults repress the sneer, ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... Weise Gehor bei Euch zu verschaffen. But I do not think that [Greek: emauto logon poiaeso] can bear the sense of [Greek: logon tuchoimi], "get a hearing for myself." And the orator's object is, not so much to sneer at the people by hinting that they are ready to hear abuse, as to deter his opponents from retaliation, or weaken its effect, by denouncing their opposition as corrupt. Leland saw the meaning: "Not that, by breaking out into invectives, I may ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... Goddard, who had not presented himself before, came hurriedly forward and confronted them. His face was very pale, but there was an angry light in his eyes and a bitter sneer upon ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... mouth—it's always getting me into trouble!" thought the stranger, trying in vain to smooth down the corners of the offending organ, which in spite of him would curve with what Hagar called a sneer, and from which there finally broke a merry laugh, sadly at variance with the suffering ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... hearty cheers were given for the ladies of Sturgis. Great credit is due to Mrs. William Kyte, chairman of the committee, as well as to all the other members, for their management of the whole affair. The utmost good feeling prevailed, and not a sneer or a jeer was heard from the lords of creation, but a large majority seemed to hail this as a precursor of what they expect in the future, when the people shall be educated to respect the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic. But a young spirit panting for fame, doubtful of its powers, and certain only of its aspirations, is ill-qualified to assign its true value to the sneer of this world. He knows not that such stuff as this is of the abortive and monstrous births which time consumes as fast as it produces. He sees the truth and falsehood, the merits and demerits, of his case, inextricably entangled.... No personal offence ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... Roddy, as a doctor I played full professional service on him, and piled it up with every extra kindness one castaway man could render another. . . . And the devil, as he recovered, lay watching me, under half-closed eyes, with never a sign of gratitude, but, for all my reward, this shifty sneer. ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... laugh, and half a sneer. I hated him for it, as he sat leaning back on the back legs of his chair, his thumbs in his arm-holes. I felt his eyes—those smart, keen eyes, burning into my miserable head. I thought of the lawyer and the deal he'd give poor Tom, and ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... those unbending habits and irrevocable rules, have no right to find fault, for these be the right royal results of the admirable but somewhat unyouthful qualities they adored in the young Queen. They have no right to sneer because a place of honor is given in Her Majesty's household to that meddlesome, old-fashioned German country cousin, Economy; for did not they all rejoice in the early years of the reign to hear of this ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... other volumes, merciless recitals, now and again, of the shortcomings of his associates or servants; a cold blooded misrepresentation of his son; a sneer for the affair with Ina Thornhill, with the dictum, sound enough no doubt, that the girl herself did the courting, and that she had no conscience—"The extreme society type of parasite," he put it. And then the account of his ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... nothing to Dorothy of her interview with Richard; she appeared to believe that Richard had saved her that labor. There was a kind of sneer in this. Feeling the sneer, Dorothy put no questions; she was willing, in her resentment, to have it understood that Richard had told her. Why should he not?—she who was to be his wife! Dorothy would have been proud to proclaim her ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... wait till doomsday afore J'rome sticks to his part on't," said Basset, with a sneer; ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... pride, in her trappings so dainty, May sneer with contemptuous air; Fertility, pleasure, and plenty, Still follow the track of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... moved, never changed his attitude, although Keith noted that his right hand was hidden beneath the skirts of his long coat. The plainsman drew back, facing his enemy, until he reached the outer door. There was a sneer on Hawley's dark sinister face like an invitation, but a memory of the girl he had just left, and her dependence upon him, caused Keith to avoid an encounter. He would fight this affair out in a different way. As the door opened and he slipped forth into the gloom, ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... stood in the courtyard, while the Dark Master was seeing to horses being made ready for them. Drawing his cloak farther about his hunched shoulders, the latter turned to Brian with a mocking sneer. ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... the fat thing's gone in for priests now, has she?" she exclaimed, with a sneer. "Well, a little holy water may do ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... stepped back to sneer at Sanderson. But he had noted the steadiness of the latter's ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer |
